After years of searching, astronomers have finally detected an atmosphere on a rocky planet around another star.
But what a strange planet it is! 55 Cancri e seems to be blanketed in carbon dioxide gas bubbling out of a global ocean of lava. Like an image out of Dante's Inferno.
One of the great frustrations in the search for life in the universe: It's much easier to study extreme, hellish planets (huge, hot, etc) than to study the moderate worlds where life could plausibly exist.
Aurora colors come from atoms that are trying to shed some of their energy.
In very thin air, oxygen survives in a delicate, high-energy state that emits green light. In denser air, atomic collisions knock oxygen to a lower-energy state that emits red. Nitrogen is a robust emitter that glows bright in even lower, denser layers of the atmosphere.
We're about to get our first taste of the far side of the Moon.
This morning, China's Chang'e-6 spacecraft set off to collect samples of the lunar farside & bring them back to Earth. The complex mission includes a drill, a scoop, and a mini rover.
Well that's cool! These are the shadows of the 2017 and 2024 North American solar eclipses, observed by the GOES weather satellites & superimposed on each other.
The images show the Moon's shadow at 10-minute intervals.
NASA's JWST observatory captured an extraordinary, zoomed-in look at the iconic Horsehead Nebula.
In the new image, you can see the boundary where a dust cloud is being blasted away by radiation from newborn stars. And just above, JWST reveals an entire cosmos of distant galaxies hidden behind the top of the horse's "mane"!
Our galaxy seems to be full of "rogue" planets wandering alone between the stars.
A new observation from NASA's TESS space telescope hints that these dark worlds might hugely outnumber the normal (?) planets, like Earth, that bask in the warmth and light of a sun.
Tiandu-2 is part of a lunar communications network being set up to support China's upcoming Chang’e-6 lander. It will attempt to collect the first samples from the lunar farside, launching as soon as next month.
Jupiter's moon Io is the most hellish spot in the solar system -- a place of nonstop, sulfur-laced volcanic eruptions.
This new NASA visualization shows a strangely calm-looking lake of magma on Io. The video is directly based on imagery from the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter.
NASA has just confirmed that the Dragonfly octocopter will launch in July, 2028. When it arrives, it will spend at least two years flying over the organic-rich sands of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.